Amazon Sued Over Streaming of ‘Spellbound’ Documentary

An owner of copyrights in the 2002 spelling-bee documentary “Spellbound” accused Amazon.com Inc. in Los Angeles federal court of streaming the film without its permission for nearly two years.

Zelus Film Holding Co. said it received the distribution and exploitation rights to “Spellbound” in 2015 as repayment for loans. According to the complaint, Amazon streamed the movie on demand on its Prime Video platform without permission or a license from Zelus from 2017 to 2019.

Amazon removed “Spellbound” from Prime Video after Zelus sent it a notice of copyright infringement in February 2019, the complaint says.

Zelus says Amazon didn’t ...